The Access Economy

Ayn Rand warned us about it when she coined "an aristocracy of pull" in Atlas Shrugged to describe a system dependent on trading favors instead of goods and services with actual defined value.

Kara Swisher nails it here when she talks about how you don't need acumen or expertise or competence when you can rely on having access to the people who make the decisions about the money.

Access. How many times do we have to hear about the bullshit absolute supremacy of access (arts, communications, the press, etc - and now normal everyday commerce) before enough of us insist on putting people in charge who actually know what the fuck they're doing?

PS) I hope the Ayn Rand reference didn't scare anybody off. She was an absolutist, and a bit of a quack, and certainly a hypocrite in the end, but - you know - even a blind hog roots up and acorn once in a while.

Caveat Emptor

If I sell a product in my store, and that product turns out to be faulty to the point of endangering my customers, then I have to assume part of the liability. Not all of it, but some.

Those folks aren't just the suppliers' customers, they're mine too. I have a certain responsibility to vet my suppliers and their products, the same as I have a responsibility to vet my customers to make sure they're on the level, so I get paid for my goods and services.

Amazon is looking to duck their share of the resposibility, the same as they try to weasel out of paying their share in taxes.

Sick of this shit. There's no honor in it. Maybe I've always been a bit naive about it, but I want to say I remember a time when not everybody was always trying to put one over on somebody, and going to great lengths to offload their costs onto either their customers or the government (which is essentially the same fuckin' thing, dammit).

The point of the exercise cannot be to leave the other guy holding the bag every time.

This is the kind of result we'd expect from consolidation and monopolization. If you don't have to worry about a customer not coming back - because they've got nowhere else to go - then you've got 'em by the balls, and you can pretty much do whatever the fuck you want.

Amazon sues Consumer Product Safety Commission over recall order for hazardous products

NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon has sued the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission for finding the e-commerce giant legally responsible for the recalls of hundreds of thousands of products sold on its site.

The independent federal agency ordered Amazon in January to take several actions, including notifying customers who bought more than 400,000 items covered by recalls and giving refunds to those who could prove the products were properly disposed of or destroyed.

The order followed the commission’s unanimous determination last summer that Amazon was a “distributor” of faulty items sold on its website by third-party sellers and shipped through the company’s fulfillment service

But Amazon has long disputed it qualifies as a “distributor” of products offered by other sellers. In its lawsuit filed on March 14, the company maintained it serves as a “third-party logistics provider” and therefore should not be held liable for recalls of products that were made, owned and sold by others.

The commission sued Amazon in 2021 for allegedly distributing hazardous items, accusing the company of putting consumer safety at risk by failing to properly notify the public about recalled products that included defective carbon monoxide detectors and flammable children’s pajamas.

Amazon said in its lawsuit that it issued previous recall notices and some refunds shortly after the CPSC raised safety concerns several years ago. The company argues the commission is an “unconstitutionally structured agency” that overstepped its authority with the new directive.

“The remedies ordered by the CPSC are largely duplicative of the steps we took several years ago to protect customers, which are the same steps we take whenever we learn about unsafe products,” Amazon said in a statement sent to The Associated Press. The Seattle-based company said it could not comment further on its lawsuit filed last week.

Amazon and Elon Musk’s SpaceX also have active lawsuits challenging the structure of the National Labor Relations Board as unconstitutional. The two companies initiated the cases after the labor agency filed complaints against them in disputes about workers’ rights and union organizing.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission declined to comment Wednesday on Amazon’s lawsuit complaint. In a Jan. 17 statement about the hazardous products order, Commissioner Richard L. Trumka Jr. said it was the CPSC’s job to “hold companies like Amazon accountable” and “no company is above the law.”

Call Greg

If you have some trouble finding the stuff you need at the store in the next several-days-to-weeks, let Greg Abbott know your opinion on the shit he's pulling at the border.

(512) 463-1782

Information, Referral, & Opinion Hotline

(for Austin, Texas and out-of-state callers)

I'm sure ol' Greg would love to hear from ya.

Brian Tyler Cohen:

A 2-Minute Hate

The slave trade.

We get caught up in the ideology, sometimes to the point where some of us can't quite figure out that hating slavery isn't supposed to translate to hating the slaves for having been enslaved.

I'm left with the sense that we're indulging ourselves in a little Blame-The-Victim exercise as we try to resolve our internal dissonance.

Anger turned inward is depression, and that feels bad.

Anger turned outward is aggression, and that feels better. 

Today's Today

So, no, I'm not laughing at the tragedy. I'm laughing at the sometimes absurd reactions to the tragedy.

Reactions like the inevitable commercialization of every-fucking-thing no matter what, here in USAmerica Inc.

There's also the point that it seems like we feel a need to sanctify certain events. And I think that leads us to concentrate on aspects of the event that we can relate to (3,000 dead on 9/11), at the expense of other - arguably greater - lessons that get pushed into the background; lessons that would make the next 9/11 less likely.

Commerce Marches On

From WaPo today:

A new law in Michigan will prohibit local governments from banning, regulating or imposing fees on the use of plastic bags and other containers. You read that correctly: It’s not a ban on plastic bags — it’s a ban on banning plastic bags.

--and--

Bans and restrictions on the use of plastic bags are widespread in other parts of the country and around the world. The rationale is simple: Plastic bags are infamous non-biodegradable sources of pollution — although they will eventually break down into tiny pieces, scientists believe this process can take hundreds of years, or even up to a century, in landfills.

--and--

The new Michigan law was met with praise from the Michigan Restaurant Association for this reason.

“With many of our members owning and operating locations across the state, preventing a patchwork approach of additional regulations is imperative to avoid added complexities as it related to day-to-day business operations,” said Robert O’Meara, the association’s vice president of government affairs, in a statement.

Threaten the Cookie Cutter Cost-vs-Profit Structure, and the Rent Collectors will punish you.

And what was that about a powerful remote Central Government imposing its will on the noble local folk?

Today's Today - Cont'd

Saw this on Olbermann last nite too (he led with it and he was pissed about it - surprise surprise), but it just popped up on Addicting Info:

Lemme be clear - I don't have any problem with how anybody remembers or commemorates or grieves or whatever.  My main thing is that everybody gets to do what they wanna do - which includes doing nothing at all, btw.

Keith Olbermann gets to do it his way and you get to do it your way and I get to do it my way; and we all get to feel however we feel; and we all get to express it however we want as long it doesn't pose a threat to anybody's reasonable expectation of physical safety.

We're a little weird here in USAmerica Incorporated.  I look for exactly this kind of crass commercialism because I think it signals our willingness to move past the Compulsory Solemnity Phase in our process of "getting on with it".

Steve-O-Lanterns

By way of old high school buddy, and wood carver extraordinaire, Steve Pancoast at Piece Of The Wind: